


Suptober Day 17: Autumn Invading

by tiamatv



Series: Promptober 2020 [16]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Castiel and Dean Winchester and Sam Winchester are Jack Kline's Parents, Domestic Fluff, Gen, Jack Kline & Dean Winchester Bonding, Past Lisa Braeden/Dean Winchester, Pumpkins, apple cider and donuts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:28:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27088636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiamatv/pseuds/tiamatv
Summary: Dean doesn’t care if the guy taking their admission looks at them funny--a guy in his forties with his teenager kid at a Kansas pumpkin patch.
Series: Promptober 2020 [16]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1954990
Comments: 45
Kudos: 178





	Suptober Day 17: Autumn Invading

**Author's Note:**

> Not 'shippy--completely gen! I can't help it, I LOVE how soft Dean was at the beginning parts of S14, before everything went so wrong.

Dean remembers the first time he raked leaves.

That’s the funny thing about the way they grew up, right? There’s a whole crapload of stuff that Dean never had to do until he was a grown-ass man, and it wasn’t exactly ‘cause his parents always did it for him. No-one knows that, ‘cept Sam, not even other hunters. They’ve all got trauma, of course, no-one ever becomes a hunter unless they’ve got damage. But he and Sam, well. They’ve been in the life so long that it’s not that they forgot how to do the ordinary shit, there’s some stuff they never learned.

Dean knows fifteen ways to get blood out of flannel depending on what a Gas ‘n’ Sip has in stock, but he’s never run a non-industrial dishwasher, ‘cause the class of long-stay motels that they’ve spent their lives at don’t bother with ‘em, and it’s not like they ever had plates anyway. He can boost and maintain a car to the end of its mileage, but he’s never held an actual, working garage opener in his hand. (He spends a little while fiddling with the mechanism, just ‘cause it’s so _cool_. He _almost_ asks Lisa if he can take it apart. He’s pretty sure he can put it back together…)

Lisa doesn’t know any of that, of course. So it’s perfectly normal for her to gestures him towards the rake in the mud room and say, absently, “Honey, can you take care of the leaves before they start getting mushy and gross?”

Okay, Dean didn’t actually know leaves got mushy. Don’t they just… blow away?

But Dean answers, “Yeah, sure, babe,” and gets the rake from the mud room. Then he’s standing there looking at the lawn like a fucking idiot, because Dean knows how to kill and incapacitate more types of supernatural creatures than the world is aware exists, but he’s wondering how in the name of God he’s supposed to use this thing made of curved sticks and a handle to get all of those individual leaves into one big pile. (That’s what TV tells him he’s supposed to do when he rakes leaves, but for that matter, what’s he supposed to do with them after that?)

Dean looks at the rake and tells it, “I dunno, seems like there’s a better way to do this,” but what does he know?

He doesn’t know much, but he can figure this out.

That seems to be his whole damned life.

There’s a lot he learned from living with Lisa, though, and one of the things is that kids want what they want. If Ben didn’t want to go to the pumpkin patch? Well, okay, they got their pumpkins from the supermarket that year (and Dean was sort of surprised by how _sharp_ the instruments use to carve pumpkins are).

Dean knows _what_ a pumpkin patch is, but he’s never been to one outside of a case that involved a ghost in a corn maze, and pumpkins spontaneously exploding and rotting and shit like that—‘cause, again, their lives. And he has to admit, he’s kind of… curious what these things are like in the daytime, with nothing haunting them. He’s gotten more curious about things like that as time has gone on.

He and Ben and Lisa went apple picking once, and that’s kind of the same idea, isn’t it? Except pumpkins.

Except it’s not _just_ pumpkins. He kind of wishes they’d brought Cas along, ‘cause there are _bee yurts_ in this place, and the guy would definitely get a kick out of them. Admittedly the Haunted Barn kind of gave him a start—they’re not going in _there_ —but holy shit, is that a _trebuchet?_

It’s launching _pumpkins._ As he and Jack stare, one goes sailing off into the distance in a big orange blob.

“ _Awesome_ ,” he and Jack say together, and then they’re both grinning at each other.

“Hey, kiddo,” Dean points at the wagon, trundling along behind a tractor as it heads off down a track into the rest of the farm. “You want to go on the hay ride before we look at pumpkins?”

So who the fuck cares if Jack looks like a teenager and the person taking their admission looked at them a little funny—Dean’s a guy in his forties at a Midwest pumpkin patch with his teenager son? Dean doesn’t care. He didn’t do this shit when he was a kid, and Jack might’ve not gotten to be a normal little kid any more than Dean and Sam did, but that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t get to have this. And Jack looking around wide-eyed at the bustle makes it all worth it.

Jack studies the big, brightly painted red tractor and the hay-stacked platform behind it, the little kids bouncing and their parents holding on tight as it moves over the track. He reaches back and scratches his butt. “I don’t think so,” he says, dubiously. “It seems itchy.”

Kid’s got sense. (He also, since he’s human now, really hates things that itch.)

Well, okay then.

It’s nearing sunset by the time Jack decides he’s tired—and he’s _not_ good at figuring that part out, it turns out, he’s not good _at all_. Dean doesn’t have to carry him back to the little picnic tables near the concession barn, but it’s close: he’s stumbling and has one arm over Dean’s shoulders, Dean holding half his weight and dragging their pumpkin cart behind them, by the time they get to someplace they can sit for a while.

“My knees hurt,” Jack says, sadly, looking up at Dean. “And my ankles. And… my feet.” He looks up at Dean. “Why do my feet hurt? Aren’t they _supposed_ to support me? They always did before.”

A lady leading a whinging toddler by the hand gives Jack a weird, pitying look as she walks past. Dean resists the urge to stick his tongue out at her and bark, “Hey, at least _my_ toddler changes his own damned underwear,” as he gently lowers Jack to sitting onto a picnic table bench.

“You just overdid it, kiddo,” Dean tells him, patting his back. “S’okay. Hey, you stay right here, I’ll get us some snacks.” And drinks. He forgot water bottles for them, and if _his_ mouth is parched, he can only imagine what Jack’s feels like.

When he gets back, though, Jack’s holding court with two women of a _certain age_ —older than Dean, though he grimaces to realize that at this point, it’s not _that_ much older—and showing off his pumpkins.

“This one is for Sam,” he pats the one that’s sort of longer, with big, draping leaves coming off the end of the vine, “And this one is for Dean—” bright orange, the brightest of the three, but Jack says the stem is the greenest, too—“And this one is for Castiel.” _That_ particular pumpkin grew in a little bit of a funny way, but when Jack pointed out that that narrow groove in the middle really looked like Cas’s tie, Dean couldn’t stop seeing it now, too. “And this one’s for me.” He points to the small one that he insisted on even though Dean told him he should get a bigger one. “Because I’m small.”

One of the ladies chuckles, and it’s gentle, but not quite mocking. She pats the back of his hand, and her smile is kind. Dean winces a little as the contrast between her dark skin and the back of Jack’s hand makes him realize that Jack is probably sunburned in the parts that aren’t covered up.

“Honey, if _you_ are small, what’s that make the rest of us, huh?” she asks. She’s probably a good six, ten inches shorter than Jack, even sitting down, and she’s wearing the same jeans and flannel as Dean is.

“Oh, I know,” Jack says, unbothered. “But I’m littler than _them_ , and I’m a little weird.” He picks up his pumpkin, just big enough to cradle between both his hands, and studies it, smiling. “Besides, no-one else wanted this pumpkin, because it’s lumpy. This way, _I’ll_ enjoy it.” He turns it around. “I bet it will make a delicious pie. So who cares how it looks? I want to learn how to make a really good pie.”

Yeah, Dean wondered why he picked that one. Damn.

The other woman, sitting across the table from him, laughs. She’s wearing flannel and jeans, too, her face shaded by a baseball cap, but gray-streaked hair is tangled over her shoulders. “So are they your brothers? Sam, Dean and Castiel? Awful nice of you to get pumpkins for them, too.”

“Oh, no, they’re my dads,” Jack says, proudly. “Not my biological dad, just… my dads. They adopted me. This is the first time I’ve ever done _anything_ like this. This is so great!”

The two women exchange a long glance.

Okay, so Jack knows that there are certain things he shouldn’t be mentioning around strangers, like the whole _son of Lucifer_ business. But Dean’s suddenly realizing with a drop in his gut that the whole ‘I have three dads’ thing—even though it’s normal for them, and something that everyone who lives in the Bunker knows really damned well—might be a little too much for Sublette, Kansas.

Dean’s coming in hot, even with a plate of donuts and two cups of cider balanced in hands, when one of the ladies says, “Oh, you’re very lucky,” and puts her hand over the back of the other woman’s. “ _Our_ daughter’s only a little older than you, but she hasn’t wanted to go to a pumpkin patch for a long time now. But my wife and I met at this one, on the hayride, so we come every year.”

Oh. Okay.

“Oh, that’s very romantic!” Jack says, bobbing his chin. Then he cocks his head, and it’s so damned _Cas_ in that moment that Dean almost trips. “But is it itchy? It looked itchy, so we didn’t do it.”

The women burst out laughing. But by the time Dean’s got to them, one of them’s told Jack, “I guess it is a little itchy.”

“I _knew_ it,” Jack says, smugly.

Okay, how the hell’s Dean not supposed to smile at that?

The woman across the table, with the greying hair, looks up at Dean as Dean approaches. She gives him a quick once-over, but it’s assessing, not the kind of once-over he normally gets from women, and Dean relaxes. Okay.

“You have a very nice son,” she tells him, and it sounds like a hell of a compliment. “He’s got beautiful manners.”

Jack beams.

“Yeah, that’s all Jack’s other dads, nothin’ to do with me,” Dean agrees, gruffly, and lowers the apple cider in their paper cups gingerly to the rugged wooden surface before he slides the sugar-coated plate of donuts off his forearm. Jack’s eyes go wide and delighted, and he grins up at him.

“Other dads?”

“Me, my brother Sam. And, uh, and Cas.” And even as he sees their eyebrows rise, he hurries ahead with, “We’re makin’ it up as we go along, I guess. Hey, want a donut? We got plenty.” They were selling them by the dozen, and they smelled so damned good—Dean figured they could always take home whatever they didn’t eat, and he’s kind of starving. He knows from experience that putting food in front of someone is a damned good way to distract them.

They don’t ask any more uncomfortable questions about the whole dads thing, to Dean’s relief. The one with the cap is Iris; her wife is Tansy.

“ _Really_?” Dean asks, before he can help himself.

“Tansies are very nice flowers,” Jack muses. “They look like buttons! Some cultures use them to treat digestive issues, but they can be toxic.” When Dean raises an eyebrow at him, he shrugs. “Castiel and I are studying plants. We’re going to have a garden.”

Iris all but ‘awwws.’

They leave off before too long, but not before telling Jack that next time, he has to try racing the rubber duckies.

(Okay, Dean’s _definitely_ getting Sam and Cas along for that.)

“Oh- _hh_ ,” Jack moans, around a mouthful of apple cider donut, leaning forward onto his elbows and taking a bite that Dean’s almost sure is too big. “I think this is the best thing I’ve _ever eaten_.”

Normally Dean would scoff, but Jack’s _two_ , and freshly human, so it might be possible. Dean takes his own bite of warm donut and sighs, happily, as the sugary crust crunches between his teeth. The center is soft and cakey and light, and the cinnamon sneaks up on him. “It’s pretty good, yeah,” he agrees, happily, and sips his cider.

“Why don’t people do these things all the time, Dean?” Jack asks, gesturing around them as he finishes his donut and reaches for another one. “This is so much _fun_. Why does this only have to be something for now?”

It’s a good question, and Dean sits back, licking the cinnamon and sugar off his fingers. He reaches for another donut himself, then after a moment’s thought, breaks it in half.

“Autumn doesn’t… it doesn’t sneak up on you, you know?” Dean flicks his thumb towards the pumpkins sitting in their cart at the end of their little picnic table. “You gotta earn autumn.”

Jack frowns. “It’s a season, you can’t earn a season.”

Okay, Dean’s not saying it right. He bobs his chin. “Look, if we did this stuff all year round, it wouldn’t be as fun, right? It wouldn’t be special. It’s like, well, like _autumn_. You get the pretty leaves, and the air’s nice and cool after everything’s all sticky in summer. It’s like one last reward before winter’s here. So you— _we_ —have to enjoy the hell out of it.”

Jack considers this, chewing. He swallows before he talks, which is something that he definitely didn’t learn from Dean. “So when I bring in the pretty leaves I find outside the bunker and I leave them on the table, they’re my last reward before winter, and _not_ an invasive species?” he says, looking very sly and pleased with himself.

“Uh-huh. Kiddo, they are if you don’t clean them up after yourself,” Dean snorts, and bites down on his half of donut.

Maybe they should get a rake. There _are_ a lot of leaves that end up blowing into the little entryway in front of the bunker, and now Dean knows what to do with them. He could teach Jack to rake leaves.

“Dean, you’re very smart,” Jack tells him, sighing happily over his sip of apple cider. He puffs on it carefully a few times and takes a longer drink.

That’s something a grand total of _no-one_ ever says, so Dean smiles. The kid’ll learn, eventually, but until then, it’s nice to hear.

Dean might not know much, but he can figure this parenting thing out.

“So... if autumn is a reward, why does March come in like a lion, leave like a lamb?” Jack asks him, leaning forward on his elbows, wide-eyed. There’s sugar crystals all over the corners of his mouth, and how did he get cinnamon on his cheekbone? “Why can’t that just be… spring?”

Some things he can figure out. And there are some things he just can’t.

“Okay, see, _that_ you can ask your smarter dad,” Dean laughs.

~fin~

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, I have to write something spicy now, this was too much innocent floof for my poor brain...
> 
> (I've also never actually been to a pumpkin patch, so all of this was based on some rough research! There really is a pumpkin patch in Sublette, Kansas that has a haunted barn, rubber duck races, and the ubiquitous apple cider donuts and apple cider, though.)
> 
> Okay, I'm ALMOST caught up--I think there'll be one more story tonight!


End file.
